The Role Of Intellectual Property in Innovation

A colleague of mine recently had a conversation with Nancy Edwards Cronin of ipCapital Group, a consultancy focused on developing effective intellectual property strategies. Since patents can play such a big role in whether or not many innovations succeed, or just provide a springboard for competitors, Nancy had a lot to say in the area of innovation.

With her background in engineering, Nancy speaks easily to techies and notes that communication is one of the areas in which the innovation process can get bogged down. One trend that she is seeing, particularly in the technical products arena, is this lack of communication between sales and marketing and engineering has led to a greater emphasis on the look, feel and branding of the product rather than what goes in the bottle.

We too are seeing this trend in the marketplace. Product marketing, often left until last, should be conducted at the front end of innovation. A focus on providing customer value in the early stages of product development results in a product that meets consumer needs not just a marketing campaign that tries to do so.

This focus on the marketplace, an unbalanced approach, can cause companies to neglect proper intellectual property protection and, particularly for young companies can be devastating. On the other hand, investing time and effort into IP protection can be useless for smaller companies without the financial wherewithal to defend it. Edwards Cronin advises that often incremental innovation, capitalizing on existing distribution channels and technologies will often yield greater results than "blue sky" technologies, but this too has its drawbacks.

... companies that have historically operated on incremental improvements now find that they struggle to come up with the next "brand new thing. Further, the new ideas they develop may already be claimed in the marketplace or in the patent literature. They may also overlook the need to protect their innovations early and lose valuable ownership of their investment. Worst of all, they may determine that even their best innovations aren't aligned to the direction of the business, thus becoming a wasted expenditure of valuable development time and money.

On the flip side, many entrepreneurs start out with a technical idea and develop products but have little idea of how to sell them or even understand the marketability of these products

With her firm's emphasis on patent protection, Edwards Cronin had a lot to say in this area. She advises making protection of intellectual property a key part of any innovation strategy. Proper patent search and competitive analysis should take a front seat in the process.

As executives lead their organizations to be more innovative and expand their collaboration efforts, they are recognizing the unmistakable connection between innovation and IP. When developed and employed strategically, IP may be used to protect their innovation investment and maximize the success of the collaboration.

ipCapital Group has developed an "invention session" that they use with their clients to ensure that technological innovation is on the right track. These sessions, based on a team approach, bring managers from multiple disciplines into the innovation process from the start and address key issues that are often forgotten in the rush to market. Understanding the marketability of the idea is key before starting any patent process. This is especially important for new companies that have limited resources.

By ensuring that technology in development meets the needs of the marketplace, valuable time is not wasted pursuing unmarketable ideas. By considering the importance of intellectual property rights to the success of the project early on, appropriate patents can be applied for and protected, of considerable importance in highly technical fields.

We at Atomica consider this multi-disciplinary approach indispensable to any innovation process. As the role that technology plays in a wide variety of fields grows and matures, remembering to protect intellectual property and ensure that it is a good fit with the organization and with consumers is critical.